Digital news startup Vocativ cuts staff

Vocativ, the digital news startup that has long claimed to mine the "deep Web" for stories, laid off several editorial staffers today, a spokesperson for the company confirmed to Capital.

One source with knowledge of the situation pegged the number at eight, and another, at nine.

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The spokesperson would not confirm the figure, but did say that today's reductions were part of a larger effort realign the newsroom with the editorial vision of new chief content officer Gregory Gittrich.

Gittrich, formerly the editor of NBC News Digital, joined Vocativ in January, as part of a realignment of the company's executive structure.

Vocativ told Poynter in January that its staff would grow by 25 or 30 percent in 2015, and a spokesperson said that Thursday's departures won't change that.

On Tuesday, Vocativ announced two additions, a senior editor and a contributing editor, and the spokesperson said that the company's staff headcount exceeds 70.

Several sources also told Capital that Vocativ decided against renewing the freelance contracts of its global bureau chiefs earlier this year, effectively shuttering its foreign bureaus.

Resources, instead, are being deployed on freelancers versed in video and visual storytelling, a spokesperson said.

Vocativ was founded in 2013, and covers domestic news, international news, tech, money and culture.

According to Comscore statistics provided to Capital, Vocativ's website brought in 252,000 unique visitors in January. Vocativ's internal metrics, however, put the number much higher, at 2.5 million.